The Effect Of Self-esteem On Intertemporal Choice Of Undergraduates Under The Loss And Gain Situations

Do you choose to spend all the salaries on shopping,or save it and invest in the future?In our daily life,we always meet various kinds of choices like that,we call it“intertemporal choice”.This term refers to the decision that a person made after weighing the gains and losses on different time points.“An exchange theory of money and self-esteem in decision making” supposes that people can improve their self-esteem through getting money.On the other words,people can make the decision that they want to get money right now or a few days later via measuring their self-esteen level.Intertemporal choice includes the instant option and the delay option.So we can infer that the self-esteem level will influence one’s choice tendency.More importantly,intertemporal choice have two situations: loss and gain.Based on that,this study aims to know,whether the choice tendency have the differences or not,when the diffence levels of self-esteem make dicision in difference situations.This study uses the undergraduates as the studying object and includes two parts.The first one use the Self-Esteem Scale made by Rosenberg and Intertemporal Choice Questionnaire made by Chen Haixian to measure the relationship between the self-esteem level and intertemporal choice;The second one is to inquiry whether the choice tendency which made by different level of self-esteem in different circumstances has the difference or not,getting the results from two views:behavior and EPRs.The behavior index is reaction time and delay discounting rate,the ERPs index are N1、P2、LPP.The conclusions are as follows:(1)There has significant negtive correlation between self-esteem level and delay discounting rate,and self-esteem level can negtive prediction one’s choice tendency.(2)Different self-esteem levels and circumstances can influence the behavior index of intertemporal choice.As for the reaction time,the reaction times under gain circumstance are larger than that under loss circumstance.As for the delay discounting rate,the delay discounting rate of low self-esteem is significant larger than that of high self-esteem;the delay discounting rate of loss circumstance is significant larger than that of gain circumstance;on the gain circumstance,the delay discounting rate of low self-esteem is significant larger than that of high self-esteem,but on loss circumstance,there don’t have significant difference.(3)There have the shared components:N1、P2、LPP,when different self-esteem level individuals made the intertemporal choice in different circumstances.The amplitudes of N1,P2 don’t have the significant difference in high and low self-esteem,while the difference of LPP reached the significant difference between high and low self-esteem.The high level of self-esteem indures larger amplitudes of LPP compared by that indured by low self-esteem;the gain circumstance indure alarger amplitudes of LPP than that indured by loss circumstance.On loss situation,the high level of self-esteem indures larger amplitudes of LPP compared by that indured by low self-esteem;but on gain situation,the amplitudes of LPP don’t have significant difference between high and low self-esteem.(4)The result of this study supports “reverse sign effect”.